


They’re Talking about You, but You’re Still the Same

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gossip, House Tyrell, M/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 21:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3744895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Megga has exciting news for her cousin the queen: a tale of forbidden passion between two knights close to the throne.</p><p>Margaery may or may not already know more about the affair than she lets on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They’re Talking about You, but You’re Still the Same

**Author's Note:**

> A few months ago I read that show!Loras would continue to bed random men in S5 (Renly who?), and I started wondering what if poor Lancel had been one of Loras’ hookups. Other than that tweak and some character interactions caused by it, I kept this as close to book canon as possible. Also, possibly the first Megga POV story in the fandom! 
> 
> Title is from the song “Nightcall” by Kavinsky. I own nothing.

Margaery was reading with Elinor and Ser Osney Kettleblack when Megga burst into the queen’s chambers.

Rather, Margaery and Elinor had their heads close together over some boring old book. Ser Osney stood by the window, looking bored. He often looked thus in the company of the queen and her ladies, except when Margaery teased him. 

Megga never wanted to tease Ser Osney. His rough manners and the scars on his face frightened her, and he was not as nice to her as he was to Margaery. Even with Margaery, he was nothing like sweet Ser Mark Mullendore, with his big, sad eyes.

“Your Grace,” Megga exclaimed as all three turned to look at her. “I have the most amazing news to tell you!”

Margaery arched an elegant eyebrow. Back home in Highgarden, she had practiced in front of a mirror with Megga and Alla and Elinor’s help, though mostly they’d made each other laugh. Only Margaery had mastered the expression, as befitted the prettiest of them all.

“Ser Osney,” Margaery addressed the knight, who perked up like a hunting dog. Megga stifled an ill-timed giggle at the thought of the knight begging for a treat at Margaery’s feet. 

“Please leave us and go keep Ser Boros company for a bit,” Margaery told the knight. “I can see that my cousin is positively bursting with her news, and that it is only for us women.”

Ser Osney’s brow furrowed. “Tha’s not safe, Y’Grace,” he said. Whenever he opened his mouth, Megga wondered anew how such a brute had ever been knighted. “I ought t’remain by your side at all times.”

“Whom have you kissed this time, Megga?” 

Elinor’s voice shattered Megga’s pleasure at having Margaery count her among the women, despite Megga not having flowered yet. It must happen any moon now… 

“Some stable hand? Another potboy?” Elinor gasped like a mummer. Megga scowled. “Not some Flea Bottom urchin come to beg for scraps at the kitchen postern? Did you lose a wager with Alla?”

“No,” Megga replied, fell silent in embarrassment at how squeaky her voice had come out. “It’s a proper secret!”

Elinor laughed at that. Even Margaery smiled. Megga wished the flagstones would open up and swallow her whole. Ser Osney didn’t smile, but he still hadn’t moved from his place by the window, where he bore witness to Megga’s humiliation. 

“Ser Osney,” Margaery repeated without looking at him. 

The knight opened his mouth to object again, but Margaery turned her raised eyebrow on him, and he wilted. 

“You do not spend all your time by my side, Ser Osney,” Margaery said sweetly. “Even such a stalwart as yourself must sleep and eat and exchange his smallclothes for fresh ones sometime. You certainly do not do those things in my presence. You shall not be privy to whatever woman’s secret my cousin has to convey.”

Ser Osney persisted in his protests, but before long he was outside, the door was shut, and Megga wished with all her might she could become as skilled in getting men to do whatever she wanted as Margaery was, once she’d flowered.

“Well,” Margaery’s voice pulled Megga out of her reverie. “Don’t be greedy and hoard your secrets, Megga, they aren’t sweetmeats to be depleted in the sharing.” 

Megga joined her cousins where they sat, perched on the cushion next to Elinor. Margaery sat on Elinor’s other side. Elinor did not think to move a little and give Megga more room, of course.

“I have just heard the most wonderful news from… someone I know in the kitchens.” 

Margaery and Elinor exchanged a look. Megga knew that they knew that she meant Garth, the potboy she’d kissed during Margaery and King Tommen’s wedding feast. Megga did not care to pause for embarrassment just then, the new knowledge she’d garnered sitting like a pebble in her breast.

“It’s about Ser Lancel Lannister, the queen regent’s cousin!”

“The one who looks like an old man and is always praying?” Elinor’s eyes were hooded. She always looked like a snake eyeing a songbird when she got bored. 

Megga wanted to squirm under Elinor’s regard, felt a flush of pride when she didn’t. “The one. I’ve heard the reason he’s grown so wan and gods-fearing is because he is atoning for a great sin. A love which must not be. You will never guess who his lover is!”

Margaery tapped her pink lips with her long, beringed forefinger. “Hmm, let me see. Could it be… my brother Loras?”

Megga felt her face fall like poorly made flan. Great-aunt Olenna had once reduced a cook to tears after being served just such a disappointing dish. “You already knew?” 

“You little goose,” Elinor told Megga. “Everyone knew, save you, apparently.”

Megga squeezed her hands into fists and pressed her lips together. She would not cry, she wouldn’t! She was no longer a baby, but oh, how it hurt! That they all knew and no one had told her, and then they’d let her embarrass herself in front of Ser Osney just now. The betrayal stung even more than Elinor’s habitual mockery.

“Now, now, Elinor.” Margaery’s soft voice washed over Megga, but it did not soothe her as it usually did. Sometimes she thought even Margaery was laughing at her, laughing at all of them while they danced attendance on her and her whims. “I told you and Alysanne and Merry. Megga and Alla are not women yet.”

“I know what men and women do together, and I’d wager a gold dragon it’s not so different between two men,” Megga cried fiercely.

“You haven’t a gold dragon to your name, possibly not in your whole dowry,” Elinor retorted. “You’re naught but a little rose from the lowest branch, hanging perilously close to the dirt.”

“I am not, and I do so have gold dragons in my dowry!”

Megga nearly struck Elinor then, more than likely would have melted into tears, despite her best efforts not to, had Margaery not stood up and swapped places with Elinor, so she was between Megga and their dagger-tongued cousin. People – usually men who would win her favor – called Elinor witty, but Megga had never known wit to be so cruel. 

Margaery took Megga’s sweaty hand in her cool, dry one. “Now, Megga, do tell us everything you’ve heard. Elinor shan’t tease you till you’ve finished, I promise.” 

Elinor rolled her eyes at Megga over Margaery’s shoulder, but she kept her peace. 

Margaery produced a hazelnut sweetmeat, Megga’s favorite, from somewhere on her person. A trifling bribe for a sulky child, but Megga accepted it all the same. The sudden burst of sweetness in her mouth was better than a kiss, though she resolved never to admit that out loud. She swallowed and sniffed, so her cousin the queen would know that Megga was still a little upset.

“Garth told me the talk of the kitchens is that Ser Lancel met cousin Loras when they fought side by side on the Blackwater. Loras paid Lancel a visit while he was recovering from his battle wound, and Lancel has been pining after Loras ever since! They’re saying his knees have grown scabbed and you can count all his ribs, because he prays all day and all night and never eats, so wracked is he with guilt for loving a Kingsguard.”

“Loras wasn’t a Kingsguard when they met, nor for a short while after the battle,” Margaery replied airily. “And Ser Lancel has done more than just pine after my brother.”

Megga gasped. Before she could utter a word, Elinor cut in. “You never mentioned that!” 

Elinor’s slighted tone made Megga feel warm like she did when she sat by the fire after an early-morning ride or when Mark Mullendore had tried to teach her to play cyvasse, laughing at her lack of skill yet letting her win regardless. He’d winked and suggested they might play come-into-my-castle next time, and Megga had shrieked with joy. 

“Keyholes are ears,” Margaery told Elinor with a pointed glance at the door beyond which she had banished Ser Osney. 

Elinor swallowed a tart reply with visible effort. Margaery kept her voice low and even. Megga leaned in close, so as to catch every word and perhaps learn how Margaery controlled her voice so well. 

“Megga’s potboy had the right of it about Loras visiting Ser Lancel after the battle, when he called on all the wounded knights who had fought for our House. They grew quite close, but Loras set the friendship aside when he was granted the white cloak.”

“Poor Ser Lancel,” Megga breathed. She had brought the story of the young Lannister’s misfortune in love to her cousins as a treat, a wicked trifle, but now she felt immense compassion for the young knight. “He’s been wounded twice over!”

Margaery shrugged, her curls bouncing, turned to mahogany in the sunlight. “I suspect Loras did not have to struggle mightily to make his choice. When he told me of it, he made a remark about candles compared to the sun. I forget what it was exactly, but it was very clever.” 

Margaery paused: she knew Megga and Elinor remembered poor Renly Baratheon and how devoted Loras had been to him. 

“My brother is as steadfast and true as a knight should be,” Margaery said. “But he has his small weaknesses, like most men. Still, that’s all over now. Loras has but one vessel into which to pour his strength and ambition, now.” Margaery’s smile looked to Megga not merely proud but triumphant.

“With everything one hears about the Lannisters, I wonder at Ser Lancel,” Elinor said. “He served King Robert and his queen and the treacherous Imp. Now he tumbles with a man, and he thinks he is going to the seventh hell for _that_ alone.”

Elinor’s eager smile withered under Margaery’s scrutiny. “Really, Elinor. Imagine what Grandmother would say about your lack of discretion. Not to mention good sense.” 

Megga swung her legs a little as she sat. She was no longer a child, but she wished for naught so much as to reach behind Margaery’s back and tug on Elinor’s long hair, and serve Elinor right. 

Margaery stood, smoothing down her skirts and her curls with an air of gentle finality, which prompted Megga and Elinor to scramble to their feet. 

“I suppose,” Margaery said, “that to a man in the bloom of youth, who has known the embrace of both woman and man, the clash of battle and the splendor of court life, spending some time on his knees or in a sparrow’s embrace must be a novel entertainment.”

Elinor shrieked with laughter. After a moment, Megga joined in. It hardly mattered if Ser Osney and Ser Boros heard the women laughing, provided they’d heard naught else. Yet as Margaery led the way out of the chamber and down to the dining hall, and Ser Osney and the portly, waddling Kingsguard fell in behind the women, Megga still felt sorry for Ser Lancel. Garth had also said the young knight had been betrothed and given a castle in the Riverlands as a reward for his valor in battle, but Megga suspected that would not be enough to heal a wounded heart.

“Your Grace,” she said softly, suddenly shy to bring this up in front of other people. “Do you recall… I asked you a question when last I shared your bed…”

Margaery smiled and put her arm around Megga, leaving Elinor to walk a step behind, with the men. Margaery’s scent of summer roses wafted over the younger girl as Margaery pressed her soft lips to Megga’s blushing ear.

“Never fear, cousin,” Margaery whispered. “I have spoken to Jalabhar Xho about your predicament. He was confident he could procure a monkey for Ser Mark off one of the ships from his homeland. One should arrive within the fortnight.”

Megga reached up to her shoulder, grasped Margaery’s hand resting there, and kissed it, drawing her laughing cousin into a tighter embrace as she did so. “I feared you’d forgotten,” Megga confessed.

Margaery withdrew her hand and stroked Megga’s hair. “Megga, my sweet, I never forget.”


End file.
